Standing before a concrete wall washed in peeling blue paint, the boy is shy but expectant. “What is your biggest dream?” the filmmaker Tinatin Gurchiani asks him, her voice gently prodding. The boy would like to be an actor, but the question is a Trojan horse. Answering it, he soon finds that more than dreams come tumbling out.

A teasing peek into the sometimes sorry lives of others, “The Machine Which Makes Everything Disappear” takes us to Georgia, the war-torn former Soviet republic, and introduces us to people with more hopes than possessions. Dangling the carrot of a part in a movie, Ms. Gurchiani sent out a casting call for Georgians ages 15 to 23, then filmed their auditions. One by one, they stand before the blue wall — the depressed, the radiant and the natural hams — and answer her playfully probing questions. Their posture is guileless and the camera a sneaky emetic, coaxing the most personal details from those unaccustomed to its gaze.

Together, those details shape a sad, strange mosaic of yearning — for fame, family or just financial relief. From time to time, Ms. Gurchiani follows someone home to a ramshackle farm or an ugly apartment building, the run-down locations given a soft beauty by the cinematographer Andreas Bergmann. These visits can feel more contrived than spontaneous, yet the film produces moments that catch in the throat, like the man who sheepishly admits he would need rehearsal to laugh on cue. Then he adds, softly, “But cry, no problem.”

The Machine Which Makes Everything Disappear

Director

Tinatin Gurchiani

Writer

Tinatin Gurchiani

Stars

Teona Bagrationi, Ramin Iremadze, Eduard Tsikolia

Running Time

1h 37m

Genre

Documentary

Movie data powered by IMDb.com

Opens on Friday in Manhattan.
Directed by Tinatin Gurchiani
In Georgian, with English subtitles
1 hour 41 minutes; not rated

A version of this article appears in print on , on Page C7 of the New York edition with the headline: The Machine Which Makes Everything Disappear. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe